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Amateur Revolution?
Ant writes "Fast Company's article mentions that networks of amateurs are displacing the pros and spawning some of the greatest innovations from from astronomy to computing. Rap inflects global popular culture from music to fashion. Linux poses a real threat to Microsoft. The Sims is among the most popular computer games ever. These far-flung developments have all been driven by Pro-Ams -- committed, networked amateurs working to professional standards. Pro-Am workers, their networks and movements, will help reshape society in the next two decades."
Rap, for one, started as do-it-yourself music among lower-income black men from distressed urban neighborhoods, recorded by artists on inexpensive equipment and distributed on handmade tapes by local labels. Yet within two decades, rap has become the dominant popular music across the world. In league with Pro-Am music distribution made possible by Napster and Kazaa, it has turned the entire record industry on its head.
;)
And it has now become the same money-hungry scheme that the rest of music is. Silver teeth, 80 gram bling, expensive cars, big houses, "hoes", problems with the law, etc. I don't see the difference between rap stars and more "traditional" music. I give this one 0/100.
Likewise, according to one estimate, 90% of the content in The Sims is created by a Pro-Am sector of The Sims ' playing community, a distributed, self-organizing group whose players are constantly training one another and innovating.
I suppose you could say that's why it is successful. I honestly believe that Quake was so very successful because people could play it the way they wanted to but I still think that the original game had a lot to do with it. If the base gameplay isn't all that great why would people be interested in building on that? I give this one 50/100.
Some professionals will find that unsettling; they will seek to defend their monopolies. The more enlightened will understand that the landscape is changing. Knowledge is widely distributed, not controlled in a few ivory towers. The most powerful organizations will enable professionals and amateurs to combine distributed know-how to solve complex problems.
More importantly the corporations find this unsettling and they have the backing to make it financially impossible for the "amateurs" to compete.
Pro-Am activity will continue to expand. Longer healthy life spans will allow people in their forties and fifties to start taking up Pro-Am activities as second careers. Rising participation in education will give people skills to pursue those activities. New media and technology enable Pro-Ams to organize.
Perhaps it has to do more with intelligent people understanding that they don't appreciate what's going on in the coporate world and they realize that they can at least do a little bit to start change in motion. I am not saying that they will get very far before the corporations do what they can to make the "amateurs" lives miserable but at least it gets the ball rolling.
Pro-Ams could fuel mass participation in formal politics and in social entrepreneurship.
No they most certainly will not. Not unless these "amateurs" get the election process changed to a reality TV style format. People just don't care enough about politics and social entrepeneurship. They want to sit at home and drug their brains with TV. That's all they want out of life. House, two SUVs, a jetski, and 2.75 kids.
Plus, if amateurs were so great the flood of high quality home-made porno would be a ton better than what Vivid puts out. Personally, I'd rather watch the oversized men fuck women with over-sized Nip/Tuck'd boobs and airbrushed looking bodies than watching a fat, hairy, man fuck some underaged looking dark-circle eyed skank on the floor of a Super8 hotel room. That's me though
From the blurb:
Pro-Am workers, their networks and movements, will help reshape society in the next two decades.
Corporations, their money, and their slaves will continue to reshape society via their direct control over multiple media outlets (solidified TV/news, radio, Internet) not the public. Grass-roots campaigns have always existed on the fringe and while their causes are noble the masses love to be sheep while thinking they aren't.
For me the difficult part is this - how do you define "professional" and "amateur"? Do you have to be an MCSE to be considered a computing professional? Do you simply have to be paid to do something to be considered a "professional"?
The article says that in the past a lot of amatuers where displaced by people who had the right bits of paper to say they could do it. Today a lot the amatuers actually have those bits of paper, for example how many Linux programmers have computer science degrees or even some lower level computing qualification.
But of course, amateurs do at times spawn some totally unfeasible and fairy-tale like ideas.
Until some major type of revolution happens, the two will co-exist... assuming the small-fry want to keep their independance.
Take homestarrunner.com, my favorite example. They have turned down offers for tv shows and the like, simply because they want full control. I havnt seen any major corp go after them for, well, anything!
no
That amateurs can contribute is, in large part, due to the steady price deflation of equipment, especially equipment based on semiconductors. Declines in the cost of a near-studio quality audio rig, software engineering workstation, or a good quality CCD astrophotography camera make these tools accessible. Low cost chips that enable the networking of the amateurs (remember when 2400 baud dial-up was charged by the minute?) so they can work together.
Thank You Gordon Moore!
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
At least not any more amatuer then Windows developers. There are plenty of people that develope applications for windows AND linux in their spare time.
But characterizing Linux developers as amatures is deceptive.
There are quite a few that do it for free, but for the vast majority they actually do get paid for the work that they do. One way or another.
Of course people like the kernel developers get snapped up to go work for big companies, and Linus is a millionare...
Think about it. Say you have a large company that depends on a free database app for your core. Like, say, MySQL or PostgreSQL.
Now if your working with MS for MS SQL you have tech support, if something goes wrong you talk to person after person as your problem gets escalated. Eventually, if you pay enough, you may actually have a very knowlegable MS person come out and do hands on help with you. However if you hire a Linux hacker, you have part of the team that does the actual developement on the software that you use working for you. Just a phone call away and he is probably almost personal freinds with the rest of the team and can contact other developers for you.
Not only for problems, but for functionality.
Stuff like that is why many do get paid.
But there are plenty that don't get paid for their work, directly....
Depends on what exactly you mean by "Pro". Many people devote their life to hacking, lots like Olympic athlets devote their time to being amature althets.
Not to say that Linux developers are the cream of the crop, nessicarially. They range the whole gammat from the weekend warrior, to the 15 year old kid that sits on the computer all day, to the professional highly skilled and specialist hacker working on breakthru stuff.
What I think is more of the "amature" revolution, is more about the regular guy standing up and getting noticed for their contributions for the first time.
People tend to think that it's all big business, or government research or university studies that get progress done. That's wrong. 75% of business is small business in the US,and I'd bet that 90% of everything new in the US comes from individuals persuing their dreams.
Artists, programmers, athletes, businessmen. Working on their own for their dreams.
Linux is just one of many examples of this happening.
And it has now become the same money-hungry scheme that the rest of music is. Silver teeth, 80 gram bling, expensive cars, big houses, hoes, problems with the law, etc. I dont see the difference between rap stars and more traditional music. I give this one 0/100.
I was just thinking about this yesterday, when I didn't recognize 1 of the top 5 songs in the country. A radio show was listing them and playing clips, and I knew a couple of the names, but the songs didn't ring a bell. I thought they were all terrible, and I happen to like nearly all kinds of music including rap.
But here is my take on rap - it is in its "disco era". Think about it - Rock and Roll had its roots in the 50s. The 60s were rebellion, and what some consider to be the heart of rock music. The 70s started to slide, we then got Disco. The 80s was an attempt to rebound from that, and alternative music was born.
Rap has its roots in the early 80s. I would call the late 80s/early 90s the "60s" of rap. It really showed that it wasn't going away and made a mark on the world. But I think that we are now in the Disco age of rap, where it is all just posing and people trying to cash in. For the most part, the art and creativity is out the window. I just wonder what the "80s" of rap will bring.
But you cannot discount rap any longer. It truly comes from the grassroots and I think fits the intent of this article. Now the STATE of rap is questionable, but I don't think you can question its legitimacy and power.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
"Amatuers" have been displacing "Pros" forever. Whenever someone does something good, other people will come along and make it better, its not bad but its not something new to our generation.
50 years ago the FEC railroad took on the entire US.
The Florida East Coast has demonstrated how much you can do if you allow yourself not to be constrained by the way things have been done. You see all kinds of things done unconventionally on the FEC, at all levels-in the mechanical department, in operations, in the yards. One reason for this is that they brought in 'inexperienced' people instead of embracing the institutionalized verities that were there before them. Conventional wisdom went out the window, where it so often belongs." -FEC president W. L. Thornton
"how can they call it a MINE if everything here is THEIRS?!?!" -Straight Jacket
But you cannot discount rap any longer. It truly comes from the grassroots and I think fits the intent of this article. Now the STATE of rap is questionable, but I don't think you can question its legitimacy and power.
I don't discount the "power" that rap holds in the music world. What I do discount is that it is still a rebellion against traditional music. They are just a different genre. They certainly aren't fighting "The Man".
After reading that article, the question arises: What exactly is the difference between a "professional" and an "amateur?"
In my view, there is none. Both groups are comprised of people devoted to their crafts, with the knowledge and passion to succeed. It may be that professionals are more likely to have learned their crafts under the tutelage of a master craftsman or through some sort of schooling, while an amateur is more likely to have learned his trade "on his own" but in most cases, there is a large crossover. Many professionals learned their trade themselves without much tutelage and many amateurs actually have some formal training in their field.
Rather than say it's a professional vs. amateur situation, I'd be more likely to term it as a for-a-living/on-your-spare-time type of thing, because oftentime, being labeled an amateur means that you somehow don't know as much as a professional, but that is often wrong. It's more that they are all professionals, but some do it just for a paycheck or recognition, some do it just because they love it, but (hopefully) most do it for both.
+1 Insightful, -1 Troll. What can I say, I'm an Insightful Troll.
Hoewever, it is technologically and physically impossible to build a cyclotron in your back yard.
No it's not.
Education is the silver bullet.
I think the conclusions the author comes to are a bit far fetched, but their premise may be accurate. While I'm sure it's true that amateurs are making an impact and performing to "professional" standard, I think the term "professional" is used a bit loosely. There's nothing professional about the lackluster UI slapped on every distro of Linux.
Don't get me wrong, though. That gripe aside, I think what amateurs offer a professional industry is insight and thought that is outside the box. Many professionals in IT, for example, have horse-blinders on. They can't see anything but Microsoft.
But this is nothing new, folks. This has happened throughout history. Almost all great inventors and thinkers have come from a rebellious non-traditional background. There is good reason for this. Their ideas and throughts are not so strictly bound by the instruction they would have received going through normal channels. I'm not advocating we all forget our professional training, but I think we can learn from those who offer "revolutionary" ideas-- not be threatened by them.
"Politicians find new names for institutions which under old names have become odious to the people."
People who are passionate about their work and love what they do aren't working, they're doing what they love.
It just goes to show that while money can motivate people, passion for the work is a better motivator.
You are absolutely right passion for work does motivate better and innovation will most certainly follow...but, as much as I'd love to live in an idealistic bubble, the sad truth is that there are simply not enough people in this world that are wired that way...through simple evolution the majority of the people in the world are passionate about procreation, consumption, and 300 channels of mind numbing crap.
So until the 97% out there bumps their collective heads on the toilet and have some life altering epiphany...the few will have to work their asses off to lead the many...monitary motivation is just one of the easier methods.
dude.
First to fall away is control of the flow of ideas. That flow has been bottlenecked by the recentralization of control of mass media in the 20th century leading to a new form of theocracy.
The events following this release of theocratic control over thought occur with a great deal of interrelationship including all manner of "amateur":
Liberalism in its original form from the Reformation and Enlightenment, meant human experimentation (e.g.: "laboratory of the States") but experimentation requires experimental controls. Therefore the prime cause for concern was not that there be agreement between parties but that disagreeing parties find ways to separate from one another to form experimental groups, allowing control groups to preserve older ways. The Age of Exploration was therefore consequent to the Enlightenment.
In the present instance we can take a not too emotional issue such as cloning as a probable "heresy" over which such issues are arising. (There are other, far more motional issues such as homosexual marriage, racial separatism, pedophillia, infanticide, etc. that we can address similarly.) There are attempts in the UN to ban cloning globally under protocols similar to bans on nuclear weaponry. Like most other social experiments people are conducting or wish to conduct, the various entities are proposing that they have world-wide jurisdiction. The conflict isn't over the technologies but over the social experiments allowed or disallowed.
This is a legitimate concern as the globe becomes smaller due to transport and communications technologies. Preemptive controls will increasingly impose on all aspects of life for security's sake. Liberty will dissipate just as it has been with the increase of all forms of centralized control. Soon there will be no more experiments in social forms save those dictated by the sort of individuals attracted to the centers of power, hence the only legacy of humanity will be the destruction of the planet.
The solution is to make the globe bigger and leave earth to the true control groups.
Humanity must find ways of dispersing life to lifeless environments, there to take up residence and leave the earth to the true conservatives -- perhaps limited to hunting and gathering with stone-age technology. Anything else would continue the destruction of vital control groups, not just hunter-gatherers but entire species such as great apes, while depriving humanity of the liberty to conduct its experiments.
The real question of legitimate use of central power isn't over whether to allow this or that experiment but whether the central power is doing everything in its power to disperse life.
By this criterion there is not a single legitimate central point of power in the world, but the worst offenders of all are those nations of European diaspora who are destroying their pioneering heritage with supposed "liberal" policies that dictate universal open borders, "diversity" via EEOC regulations down to the granularity of small mom and pop businesses, by subjecting such an enormous proportion of a family's income political redistribution that all are forced to focus their energies on politics rather than pioneering. All of these things are dictating the social experiments that are politically correct for those pioneering populations and are endangering not just those populations, but life itself as technological civilization is bottled up in an increasingly dangerous pressure-cooker.
Seastead this.
You forgot to mention the blogosphere. Blogs dramatically lower the cost of entry into journalism. This has led many professionals and a bunch of arm chair quarterbacks to contribute the media cycle. In a nation that prides freedom of press, freedom of speech, and fairness, this is a good thing.
Go Gusties
The only difference between pros and amateurs is the amount of time they spend on something and the price of their tools. Telescopes are becoming commodities just like computers. The internet allows people to collaborate and check out the same object and keep up to date on the latest developments.
It doesn't matter much if your being paid, it's how much time and work you put into what your doing and how much it costs to have the proper tools to help you out.
Astronomy and Programming now have very low barriers to entry and are easy to collaborate. It just broadeds the base of those fields. To get the the top you still need super computers or things like the Keck Observatory that are very hard to come by - for now.
About astronomy...
I am sorry but with a dobson, you can take picture of the moon and a few planets, holding your digital camera, but that's all... to take pictures of DSO (deep space object), you need a very stable equatorial mount and automatic tracking motors, to allow e.g. 10 minutes CCD exposure. (Or a heavy fork mount and a field "de-rotationner")
But it's true that now this is open to a lot of people, a > 10" SCT and a good CCD will cost more than 10000$, but hardcore amateurs can afford that, and share information and pictures on the net.
"Science will win because it works." - Stephen Hawking
I think most libertarian minded people would agree that artificial barriers to entry into segments in society are a BadThing (eg like the guilds of old). The idea that amateurs would be excluded from science, music, medicine, or any field just because they don't belong to a group goes against the grain of modern free society. So I agree with the author in spirit.
That said, however, I disagree with the author on most points because the article assumes that such artificial barriers exist across most of society. IMHO, for the most part, they do not. In the case of science and medicine -- these are *very* hard and critical professions -- the barriers to entering these professions are not artificial; they are nessecary. I for one don't want a doctor-on-the-weekends treatmenting me. Likewise, I don't think most people can train themselves to research and develope nano-technology. I'm not saying that most people can't go into such fields if they choose, it just requires a life-long commitment. Nor am I implying that one needs to pay huge $$$ to pursue such a career -- many of the state funded universities offer the same opportunies as the ivy leage schools.
\forall code \in C, \frac{\Delta readability(code)}{\Delta t} < 0
Yeah, right. Like the eveyone's gonna rush out to vote just because proportional representation was brought in.
Reality check needed methinks. People don't vote for loads of reasons. I suspect (and it's only my hunch) that the kind of person that even knows what proportional representation is probably does actually vote anyway.
it is technologically and physically impossible to build a cyclotron in your back yard.
Not at all. There are limits to energy levels you can reach with a small cyclotron, but you can make one that fits on a desktop. Lawrence's first cyclotron was only four inches in diameter.
-- Alastair
This is exactly what microsoft wants to stop. In the software business, at least.
That is why it is focusing on becoming a monopoly by gaining antitrust immunity and patenting everything that crosses it's path.
This is why it is collaborating with other companies and forming a cartel of sorts with others "damaged" by competition from Linux and other such upstarts.
History has shown that the vast majority of innovation comes from the work of "amateurs".
When it is left to corporations to innovate, innovation usually becomes mired in corporate bureaucracy or is killed off as "unprofitable".
They are very serious and determined in this. And they hope no one will notice.
The umich.edu links belong to Fred Niell, who I went to high school with (I'm '94, he's '95). I can attest to the success of his cyclotron, which was initially completed when he was a sophomore (!) and then improved when he was a junior. At least 1 version, maybe both, I can't remember, won a well-deserved national science award.
It was truly embarassing to be forced to enter a science project against his in our high school science fair. I offered to write a research paper instead, but our physics teacher was having none of it. My project was a Radio Shack breadboard with a couple of IC's that managed to record and playback about 10 seconds of sound onto the chip. Clever, I thought, but against a freaking cyclotron? I felt like the Bad News Bears against the Yankees.
Until the middle of the last century, brilliant ameteurs had always made a critical contribution to science and technology. In fact, Before the middle of the 19th century, nearly all scientific discovery was made by men whose primary "job" was outside of science.
It was only when the nature of scientific discovery, exceeded the grasp of most common men (requiring may years of esoteric study or incredibly expensive aparatus), that professional scientists forced the ameteurs to virtually disappear.
The advent of cheap manufacture, cheap and plentiful advanced digital devices, and powerful information processing on a desk top, made it possible for curious ameteur to once again participate on dozens of levels of science, that were closed to public access only a decade ago.
I'm not certain whether home brewed nanotech, might be a blessing or a curse, but these are indeed interesting times.
Genda